Dragaera

Foreheads

Mark A Mandel mam at theworld.com
Fri Apr 11 15:26:09 PDT 2003

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Philip Hart wrote:

#On Sat, 5 Apr 2003, David Silberstein wrote:
#
#> I imagine that our resident medical/biological experts could explain
#> learnedly about the widow's peak being a recessive or dominant trait,
#
#Dominant.
#
#> and the genetic implications behind the fact that it shows up in all
#> Dragaerans except Teckla.
#
#The implication would be that no nobility ended up as Teckla, or nobles
#who join House Teckla don't have children, or that a noble's point is a
#strong selection disadvantage for Tecklas (which I can well imagine).
#
#I assume that the recessive gene was bred out of nobles long ago because
#homozygous recessives get kicked out or perhaps exposed a la Oedipus.

That's assuming that this statement is categorically true across the
Teckla population. I don't think (whoever said it) knows that as a fact.
The n.p. could be very rare in Teckla, possibly for any of the reasons
mentioned above (and its genetics in our species don't have to have
carried over to Dragaerans, through all the J's mucking around with
their genomes).

-- Mark A. Mandel
   http://world.std.com/~mam/Cracks-and-Shards/
   a Steven Brust Dragaera fan website